The campaign to stop fracking ignores the latest evidence and is based largely on myths

NEW technology always meets fierce resistance, much of it based on fantastical falsehoods.

The campaign to stop fracking is no exception.

It is backed by the giant budgets and PR machines of big environmental pressure groups and based largely on myths.

After leaving the EU, Britain will have to be quicker to adopt new technologies to create wealth in the knowledge economy.

For me, that’s the biggest opportunity of Brexit.

But to grasp it we must find a way to persuade people to be more ready to embrace innovation and less suspicious.

A country that does that is going to steal a march on its rivals.

Opposition to fracking is largely irrational — like the claim early railways would cause horses to abort their foals — and flies in the face of evidence that shale gas can provide energy more cleanly than coal, more cheaply than nuclear, more reliably than wind and using less land than solar.

Calestous Juma, of Harvard’s Kennedy School in the US, wrote Innovation and Its Enemies — a book documenting just how much resistance greeted things we now take for granted: coffee, fridges, margarine, tractors, and recorded music.

Doctors in France in the 17th century accused coffee of drying the kidneys and causing paralysis and impotence.

And King Charles II banned it on the grounds that coffee houses were “insinuating into the ears of people a prejudice” against kings.

The ice industry waged a long campaign against the dangerous new technology of refrigeration.

The problem was that its own ice harvested from frozen rivers and lakes kept killing people with typhoid.

We are still letting the Luddites get in the way of innovations

Margarine, invented in France in 1869 as a cheaper and longer-lived alternative to scarce butter, was outlawed in several American states after fierce lobbying by the dairy industry.

The Horse Association of America fought to stop tractors being used on farms, and in June 1942, the musicians’ union in the United States managed to get radios to ban the use of recorded music lest it threaten the jobs of live musicians.

Britain briefly followed suit.

And we are still letting the Luddites get in the way of innovations.

Bullied by environmental vandals, Europe has effectively prevented the growth of genetically modified crops, even though these are now boosting yields and reducing pesticide use for farmers elsewhere.

Greenpeace has long campaigned to prevent vitamin-enhanced “golden rice”, produced to prevent blindness in poor children who depend on rice as their main source of food, because it has two genes from maize in it.

Organic farmers still object to the use of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, made from the air, even though its use has quadrupled farm yields, banishing starvation and saving land from the plough for nature on a gigantic scale.

We have a bias against the new. We let opponents of new technology dictate to us far too often

Objectors even try to argue mobile phones might cause brain cancer.

We have a bias against the new.

We let opponents of new technology dictate to us far too often.

Innovation is the reason why people live longer, earn more and bury one-third as many children as when I was born.

Fracking for shale gas has been a triumphant success in America, bringing cheap, clean energy in abundance.

Done properly, fracking does not contaminate ground water, cause surface pollution, undermine buildings or leak gas.

The cracks it makes in rocks are a mile down and millimetres wide.

The stuff that is pumped down the hole, into rocks rich in oily chemicals anyway, is more than 99 per cent water and sand.

The rest is highly diluted versions of chemicals you keep under your kitchen sink.

If Britain is to lead the world, we have got to get better at standing up to the anti-technology bullies.

Could you benefit from fracking?

LIVING close to a fracking site could land locals up to £65,000.

A Shale Wealth Fund could award areas near a well up to £10 million – with each household getting a share.

Our map shows which areas are most likely to benefit and how much each household could receive.

Five innovations people feared

Matt Ridley is the author of books including The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge